Rational:When
students are reading they will soon
be able to comprehend.Comprehension
happens when students are able to understand what they are reading.There are several reading strategies that can
be used to help students better understand the text.One of the major strategies used in reading
is summarizations.When students can
summarize, they are able to pick out key phrases of facts that are
important to
the test.These facts can be gathered
together so that the students can have a basic generalization of what
the text
is about.Through the activities
discussed in this lesson, students will be able to practice their
comprehension
of different text by reading and summarizing.The students will be able to see the benefits of using
summarizing while
reading, and this will lead to a more competent and comprehensive
reader.

Materials:

Paper

Pencils

Highlighter

Projector
Screen

Article: "A
Bear of a Job" by: Peter Winkler

Copies of
the article: "Living it Up in Space" by: Nancy Finton

Poster with
Rules of Summarizing

Take
out
unnecessary information.

Find the information that is important.

Write
a topic
sentence.

Sheet with
rules to pass out to each student.

Checklist for each
student:

Can the Students

YES

NO

Take out
unnecessary information from the article.

Find the
important information in the article.

Write a topic
sentence.

Procedure:

The teacher will explain to the
students the importance of summarization."Students we are going to learn about summarization today.You will be able to read an article and
better understand it by using summarization.Summarization means that as you read you are picking out certain
facts
in the reading that are important.You
are also able mark out the information that is not important to the
text."Then the teacher will show the
class her
poster of rules.She will explain the
rules to the class."First class,
you will want to as you are reading mark out any information that is
not
important to the text.Then you want to
go and either highlight or underline words of phrases in the text that
are of
importance.Then after you are done
reading, you will want to write out a topic sentence about the text you
just
read."

Next the
teacher will summarize with the students."Students, now we are going to practice summarizing as a class
before you do it on your own to give you practice."Show the class the article "A Bear Of a
Job.""Students I want you to
read through this article silently and when you are done we will go
through it
together and work on summarizing."Give students some time to read through the article and then
help them
summarize.Put the article on the
overhead and go through the article highlighting and taking away
unnecessary
information.Show them how to break down
the article by using the rules provided on the poster.

Now
pass out the article "Living it Up in Space"."Now
that we have had some practice with
summarizing I am going to let you summarize on your own.The article is called "Living it Up in
Space".While you are reading it I
want you to use your highlighter to mark what you think is important.You can also use your pencils to mark out
what you think is not important.Make
sure you follow your rules and give me a good topic sentence after you
have
finished your reading.I will be coming
around to make sure that you understand how to summarize."

Next give the
students ample time to read the whole article and summarize.Go around to each student and make sure that
you can answer any questions that the students may have or instruct
them if
they are not following the rules of summarization.

Assessment:For
the assessment part of this lesson, the
teacher will go around and observe the students as they read and
summarize the
article.The following checklist will be
used to make sure the students fully understand how to summarize.